The role of technology in creativity and scientific discovery

Following J.R. Hollingsworth (“High Congnitive Complexity and the Making of Major Scientific Discoveries”, A. Sales & M. Fournier: Knowledge, Communication and Creativity, London: Sage, 2007: 129-155), this essay do not attempt to develop a general theory of discovery or creativity. There is no consensus in the literature on the meaning of creativity: the term “creativity” has been used to adress many different problems and, in this way, it has lost much of its utility as a research concept. For this reason, the notion of “”high cognitive complexity” is employed rather than “creativity” to advance in the understanding of the work of scientists who make major discoveries. Persons with high cognitive complexity have the capacity to understand the world in more complex ways than these with less cognitive complexity. Scientists having high levels of cognitive complexity tend to internalize many fields of science and have greater capacity to understand the connectivity among phenomena in multiple fields of science, bringing ideas from one field into another. That capacity increases the potential for making a major discovery. And a major indicator of high congnitive complexity for scientists is the degree to which they internalize cognitively scientific diversity. That is why a problem to be considered is to understand why scientists vary in having high levels of cognitive complexity, and why most scientists having high cognitive complexity do not make major discoveries.

This essay will try to show that high cognitive complexity is a higher level of the process of internalizing in the way suggested by the philosopher E.E. Harris, who recently passed away. This paper intends to be an homage to him, for his teaching and kindness. At the same time, it analizes how technology of information and communication helps in the process of increasing the high cognitive complexity of scientists.